I looked up. My mother was silently adjusting a throw pillow, deliberately ignoring what had just happened. Chloe was looking at her fingernails again, completely unfazed that her sister had just been struck over a spa appointment.
I slowly stood up. I didn’t cry. The panic and the desperation that had consumed me just a minute ago vanished completely, incinerated by a sudden, terrifyingly cold clarity.
I looked down at the expensive, hand-woven Persian rug beneath my feet. A single drop of my blood had fallen onto the intricate wool pattern—a rug I had purchased for my mother as a Christmas gift last year.
I didn’t say a single word. I didn’t argue. I didn’t scream.
I turned my back on the family that had just broken my heart, walked out the front door, and stepped into the freezing rain. They thought my silence was submission. They thought I had given up.
They didn’t know I was going to find a car, and then, I was going to repossess their entire lives.
Chapter 2: Driving Through the Night
I stood on the wet pavement outside their house, the rain washing the blood from my chin. I pulled out my phone and opened a ride-sharing app. It cost me eighty dollars just to get an Uber to drive me to the only independent, seedy car rental agency open at this hour on the industrial outskirts of the city.
The agency owner, a man smoking a cigar behind bulletproof glass, saw my desperation. He charged me an exorbitant, non-refundable fee of $1,000 to rent the last vehicle on his lot: a dented, high-mileage compact car that smelled faintly of stale smoke.
I didn’t hesitate. I swiped my corporate card, took the keys, and merged onto the dark, rain-slicked interstate heading north toward Seattle.
